


Compromised

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Compromise, Courtly Love, Cultural Differenes, F/M, Honor, Interracial Relationship, Love, Romance, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Shinko and Roald come from different cultures and have different ideas of honor.





	Compromised

Compromised

Shinko loved this time of night when the courtiers finally stopped dancing and only the stars were left dancing in the darkness overhead. When the festivities wound to an end, she thrived in the silence and the serenity that hovered like a crescent moon in the night air. She thought that reverence for the peaceful quiet was something that she treasured sharing with her betrothed. 

Her betrothed should have escorted her back to her chambers after the banquet came to a close, but somehow they had gotten lost in a courtyard of Eldorne castle where the only sounds were the splashing of the fountain behind them and her ladies whispering to each other behind their fans as they sat on a bench far enough away to give Shinko privacy but near enough to be considered chaperoning her. 

Even when the rest of the world was abed, Shinko and Roald weren’t truly free from the weight of its judgmental glances and weren’t permitted to be alone together. They always had to fear saying or doing the wrong thing. Even in a deserted courtyard, they had an audience for their every word and move. 

She tried to forget that and just stare at the stars sparkling like diamonds against the jet sky. Maybe Roald was doing the same for he bent close enough to her ear that his breath tickled her skin, so sensitive around him, as he asked her, “Do you have the same constellations in the Yamani Islands, Shinko?” 

“Yes and no, Roald. The stars are in the same shapes, but we have different names for them.” That had been one of the small changes—the constant reminders that she was a foreigner far from the place where she had been born and raised but to which she would never be able to return—that had disconcerted her more than it should have when she first arrived in Tortall. The stars were the same, but their names were different, and if the name of a thing changed, its identity shifted ever so slightly. Names were ephemeral and yet everything Shinko knew was cloaked in them so to alter them was to cut the fabric of her life. 

She must have shivered—which she would blame on the chilled night air and the thin silk she was wearing—because Roald drew her against his chest. The beat of his heart warmed her as he tucked her snugly under his chin. She could feel the movement of the chords in his throat as he remarked, “I’d like to hear some of the names used in the Yamani Islands if you don’t mind.” 

“The one you call a snake”—Shinko pointed at a serpentine stretch of stars slithering across the heavens—“we call a dragon.” 

“If I look closely, I can see that.” Glancing up at Roald, she saw that his eyes were narrowed as he contemplated the constellation she had indicated. “A dragon is like a big snake, after all.” 

Encouraged that he was genuinely interested and not just putting a polite mask over boredom, she went on, directing his gaze to another constellation. “That woman you call the crone, we all the young lady. Where you see the old woman’s drooping jawline, we see a fashionable hat.” 

“When I flip the constellation in my head, I can see that too.” Above her, Roald cocked his head, studying the constellation from another angle, and Shinko smiled inside at the effort he always made to understand her perspective even in trivial matters such as the shape of the stars. 

“Where you see a wineglass”—Shinko gestured at a third constellation—“we see a fountain.” 

“That makes sense.” Roald stroked the elaborate bun that Haname and Yuki had spent a bell styling, securing the phoenix combs in the elegant knot so they looked beautiful while supporting her long hair. “You can see the water shooting from the fountain. I’ve always thought our wineglass resembled a spilled one anyway.” 

“Roald, you are always the diplomat.” Shinko could feel her eyes crinkling with humor and was thankful to the night for concealing her indecent amusement. “Do you ever think that anyone’s perspective is entirely wrong?” 

“Very few people’s perspectives are entirely wrong if you get inside their heads and try to look at everything from where they’re standing, Shinko.” Roald’s fingers fiddled with one of her phoenix combs, and she hoped that he had noticed she had worn his favorite combs. “A prince has to be able to slip into the minds of those he will one day rule to understand what they believe and what they want. That’s how my father was able to get the Bazhir to stop fighting us. When he took the time to understand them, their culture, and their history, he was able to absorb them into the country in a way King Jasson with all his conquering armies never could.” 

“Let’s not think of ruling and fathers.” Shinko just wanted to enjoy the tranquility of the courtyard with her betrothed while the stars shone down upon them. “Let’s forget about the world beyond this courtyard.” 

“We’ll let our hair down,” agreed Roald, uncoiling a comb from her hair, and the strands it had constrained cascaded down her back. She was so shocked that she couldn’t even gasp. In the Yamani Islands, lowering a woman’s hair was an intimate—though not sexual or even sensual—act. It was all but reserved for couples who had been married for years where the woman had given her husband many sons and he wished to honor her at last. 

“You’re pretty with your hair up, but you’re even more beautiful with it down.” The gentleness in Roald’s voice as he pulled another comb from her hair, unspooling more locks so they rippled like a river down her back, made tears painful as needles prick at Shinko’s eyes. 

It was an honor, she told herself sternly, to have her hair taken down by her husband-to-be, but that didn’t make her feel any less exposed and vulnerable. She felt as if he was seeing her naked, though she knew that was ridiculous since he had looked at her many times with her hair down, but something about him lowering it himself undid her dignity along with her hair. 

“I made you cry.” Roald must have glimpsed the telltale glitter in her eyes by the dim orange light cast by the torches hanging like gargoyles from the castle walls. He dropped his hand away from her hair and clutched the bench instead. “That’s the last thing I intended to do. I never want to distress you. I’m sorry, Shinko.” 

His comment on her tears only worsened her shame, and the tenderness in his tone made the tears seep from her eyes down her cheeks. She hadn’t exactly been crying before but now she was. She could feel the charcoal Haname had spent an age lining her eyes with smudging and was embarrassed at presenting a smeared, ugly face to her betrothed. No proper lady ever let her husband-to-be see her so discomposed. In the Yamani Islands, the man she had been engaged to before she was sent to Roald would have slapped her for her tears. 

“Forgive me for crying.” Shinko tried to prevent her voice from shaking, failed miserably, and internally cursed her own weakness. 

“Please don’t ever apologize for crying. You’ve every right to cry if I’ve upset you.” Roald brushed a thumb across the moisture beneath Shinko’s eyes, drying her tears. “I hope you don’t feel I’ve dishonored you, Shinko, because I’d never mean to do that to you.” 

“You’ve honored me.” Shinko fidgeted with her fan. “It’s just you shouldn’t have honored me until I bore you sons, Roald.” 

“What if we never have any sons, Shinko?” Roald arched an eyebrow as he gazed down at her. 

“Then I will have failed as a woman.” Shinko flicked her fan in front of her face to hide her burning cheeks. His mother had produced three strong sons, so Shinko cringed at the mere idea of not being able to present him with any. “I would be unworthy of your honor, Roald.” 

“I wasn’t aware that you could fail at being a woman.” Roald spoke dryly but sobered in his next sentence. “That won’t do at all, I’m afraid, Shinko. A man should always honor his lady whether or not she gives him sons. Any man who dishonors his lady disgraces himself as much as her.” 

His words were rooted in what Yuki referred to as the Tortallan cult of courtly love, where knights were forever kneeling to earn their lady’s favor so as to ride into tournament with her favor and where the Code of Chivalry was the ideal. More than that, Shinko suspected, he had been shaped by a childhood of watching his mother and father work as equals in a way that Shinko still found unbelievable even after beholding it firsthand. 

She came from a different world. Unable to paint a picture of how wives in the Yamani Islands knelt whenever their husbands entered a room and existed only to honor their husbands in everything they did, Shinko said softly, “It’s different in the Yamani Islands. There a woman who disgraces her husband shames herself, a woman lives only for her husband’s honor, and to give birth to a son is her greatest duty.” 

“We’ll have to compromise, Shinko.” Roald tilted Shinko’s chin up so her eyes were fixed on his. “If you’ll honor me by being my wife, I’ll honor you every day of my life, sons or no sons. Does that sound fair?”

“Roald, you are always the diplomat.” Shinko echoed her phrasing from earlier because she was too overcome with emotion to devise a more articulate response. “Yes, that sounds fair.” 

“Good.” Roald’s thumb rubbed at the underside of Shinko’s chin. “We have an agreement.” 

A comfortable silence settled over them like a warm blanket before Shinko, remembering how askew her hair must be with half of it removed from her bun, observed, “I must look a mess with my hair half-in-and-half-out of its knot.” 

“You’re the most beautiful mess in Tortall, I assure you.” Roald squeezed the nape of her neck. 

“Would you do me the honor of taking down my hair, Roald?” Somehow, it was a struggle for Shinko to breathe as she posed this pivotal question. 

“The honor is all mine, Shinko.” Roald loosed a comb and the rest of her hair came tumbling down her back in an ink-black wave.


End file.
